


5 Reasons This Isn't a Love Story

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iker and Cesc and why they're my otp above all other otps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Reasons This Isn't a Love Story

**Author's Note:**

> I write too much fabsillas. An emotional me + fabsillas = this fic

One. 

It never began and it never ended. Upon their meeting, something was simply awoken within them. When it was over between them, that feeling rotted, but it did not die. 

The beach was cold, and the sand felt like glass beneath his feet. Cesc’s hair was across his face because the wind was blowing, and he didn't brush it back. His sandals were muddy from walking along the shoreline and his shirt was wet in places the sea had sprayed. He shivered, but he didn't move.   
The beach was relatively deserted because no one really came there in the middle of fall. Someone else walked by with his dog on a leash, and Cesc blinked. 

He was beautiful, and nothing began. Something was awoken, and he started forward to ask anything, about the dog, the sea, hell, his fucking running shoes. 

He ended up tripping over his words and gibberish came out. Iker forgave him. Corrected his question gently and posed it again. Cesc nodded and for the first time in his life, he felt like he could own fear. 

They walked along the shore and the waves washed away their footprints. 

Two. 

They were friends, but not really. It didn't matter that there was an undeniable energy between the two of them because if love even touched it, it would be destroyed. There is no friendship for lovers. 

"You're just an asshole." 

"Yeah, I am an asshole, but at least I give a shit about you." 

They were eating sushi and laughing-- or at least they had been. And then Iker had mentioned the guy he was currently fucking around with and Cesc immediately grew hostile, frustrated, and protective. 

Iker looked down at his food. He picked at his roll. He didn't actually like smoked salmon as much as he thought he did. But Cesc recommended it, so. 

"He doesn't," Cesc continued after a long stretch of silence. "Care. He doesn't care." 

"I know." 

"So why do you act like you don't?” Cesc picked at the splinters on his chopsticks, too hard, and a tiny dot of blood appeared. “Honestly, Iker, it’s like you don’t want people to care about you. It’s like you just close yourself off from any chance of a good relationship. And then you go searching for the shittiest people imaginable and you’re fucking brilliant at finding them.” 

“Thanks,” Iker snapped, and he shifted in his seat. He looked down at his plate and decided he wasn’t hungry. Left early and Cesc offered to pay.   
They didn’t talk until Cesc’s birthday, and by then Iker had decided it was okay to care again. He visited Cesc’s gallery, bought one of his pieces, and hung it in his apartment. He decided he liked the way it made him feel like Cesc was still around. 

Three. 

He loved Cesc because Cesc was forgotten and lost, so the minute he was remembered or found, that love wavered and Cesc was forgotten once more, completing and ensuring the endurance of the cycle. 

They went out for dinner after Iker’s promotion at work, and afterwards Cesc leaned up against the wall as they waited for a cab, too drunk and tired to walk or drive home themselves. He reached in his pocket for a lighter, and he didn’t smoke or anything-- he just flicked it a few times and watched the flame appear. 

“You a pyro or something?” 

Cesc made a face and put it away. “It’s just cool looking.” 

Iker laughed and told Cesc he could be such a child sometimes, forgetting that Cesc was young and hopeful and wanted everything to be like a movie. He wanted to lean up against the wall and have the camera zoom in and make him look like something he was not. He wanted the dramatic music to make the lovers appear something more than they were. He wanted Iker to lean forward and kiss him and love him for always and an eternity after that. 

So Iker did. He leaned forward and kissed Cesc because he thought it was the right thing to do. He just forgot about the second half of that deal. He wasn’t one to stick around, and that time was no different. 

Four. 

They were forgetful and shameless. 

It was Valentine’s Day and they’d only kissed once, so neither of them expected to have to get the other anything, but they were still disappointed when they met for dinner and nothing was there, nothing happened, and the evening ended with an empty, meaningless kiss. And they were both under the ridiculous impression that all kisses had to be meaningful or something was lost. 

Cesc brought it up one time, when they were just sitting and watching TV. “That last time we kissed,” he said, starting off all quiet and embarrassed, “It just felt like colliding, nothing more, and I don’t like that.” 

“There isn’t much more to kissing, honestly,” Iker replied. He smiled a little bit because he found it amusing how well he could lie to himself. “Kissing is colliding is kissing, and so on and so forth.” 

“I just think there should be more to it.” 

“Yeah, we all do. But you can’t make up affection where there is none.” And it effectively crushed all the hope Cesc had built up since the first time they kissed. 

Five. 

They were broken and naive, but they grew out of it and grew out of each other. 

Cesc awoke one morning on Iker’s couch because they’d been watching TV and he could fall asleep anywhere (anywhere, really-- while he was on the exercise bike at the gym one time). His face was buried in a pillow and his body was covered with a blanket. He took over Iker’s kitchen, made himself breakfast, and left. He didn’t leave a note and he didn’t say goodbye. 

It became a routine. Cesc was over at Iker’s all the time, and he left in the morning without a sound. He decided their relationship was complicated even though they weren’t fucking and they were hardly speaking, just sitting in each other’s company. He almost wished they were fucking not only because he wanted Iker but because he wanted a reason to be miserable other than just pining away. Pining away from so close (fucking) was so much less pathetic and so much easier to explain. 

Cesc expected his story with Iker to end with them fucking, realizing they belonged together, and jetting off to some exotic island in the middle of nowhere where Cesc could flick his lighter and watch the little flame in the dark with no one around to make him feel like that was a stupid thing to want. But he realized that Iker was the person that would made him feel stupid for what he wanted, that Iker could never change the way he was, the way he bustled around the city like he owned the place. He realized that Iker was set in stone and to love him was to want to possess him and to possess him was to destroy him. 

So he stopped imagining that Iker was next to him in the dark, and he stopped thinking that his love life was a race, start to finish. Before that moment, it started with Iker and ended with Iker and he didn’t see before the moment he met Iker or after his fantasy future. He realized that love was something with a beginning and a middle and an end, but not in the way he thought before.   
Beginning, middle, and end didn’t mean that he was going to end up with one person forever. It meant that he would start loving a person, have a happy middle, and at some point, it would end. Love wasn’t supposed to last, and for the first time that didn’t make him sad.   
He said goodbye one morning not knowing it would be the last time it felt that way. Iker got a job in a city over two hours away, and it wouldn’t have been that difficult to stay in touch. They talked about it, they planned it, they added each other on various social networking sites, determined to use them for the first time simply to stay in touch. But in the end, they realized that Iker moving away was just an excuse for something wonderful to meet its most wonderful end.


End file.
